How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

BRAND IDENTITYPARANORMAL ACTIVITY MARKETING CAMPAIGN THE FILM'S UNIQUE SELLING POINT THROUGHOUT ITS CAMPAIGN

The marketing campaign I looked at originally was for ‘Paranormal Activity’.The campaign used to market this film began as very low budget campaign that eventually developed into a worldwide film sensation. The horror movie cost a total of $15,000 to make, it was directed by San Diego, and filmmaker Oren Peli. The film first screened in 2008 at Slamdance Film Festival and ultimately caught the attention of Steven Spielberg who is the blockbuster director. His initial desire was to direct a high-budget remake of the film, however he instead brought the film to Paramount/DreamWorks, where it took off properly.

The Paranormal campaign escalated through the form of word-of-mouth marketing to begin with. Audiences who first viewed the film would tell others about their experience of the film which formed a new marketing strategy to help promote the new film. Another unique selling point for Paranormal Activity was social media. Social media allowed the film to be marketed to audiences worldwide, it was an essential promotion tool for the Paranormal marketing campaign. To advertise and promote the movie online users were able to communicate with others online and share what they thought of the film which help stimulate hype surrounding the movie . This was a major advantage for the films distributors as the film itself was created on a very low budget and had no additional funds to set up high value marketing campaigns that would cost them a great deal. The emerging use of media had meant Paranormal Activity was able to become an extreme movie sensation due to the media social networking buzz. Their distribution strategy worked as a whole to create a worldwide sensation that helped encourage audiences watch and share the film.

HOW WERE COLOURS, FONTS, STAR IMAGES AND TAGLINES USED IN PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MARKETING.

Colours The colours are kept relatively plain and simple throughout. The poster consists of the main black background colour. The white, type-writer style font has been used on top of the black background which makes it easily visible and easy to read by viewers.

The type-writer style font used can be easily recognised as ‘Paranormal’. The font helps support the brand identity as it can be specifically identified for the film’s branding.

TaglinesThe film uses various taglines in their advertising campaigns. The taglines used on this poster read ‘WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SLEEP’- which then leads on to the title for the film. The other tagline reads ‘DON’T SEE IT ALONE’. The capitalised font indicates to the viewer the importance of these words and suggests a kind of threat.

Font – Titles The red font used on the title can instantly be seen. The red colour stands out amongst the other text on the poster, the bold font also helps to illuminate the title. The red colouring is typically used to identify the films brand identity. The red is commonly used to suggest the danger and thrill surrounding the film.

Star ImageThe star image shown on this poster is the filming footage from the film. The image shows the characters from one of the scenes in action.

HOW HAVE WE USED COLOURS, FONTS, STAR IMAGES AND TAGLINES ON OUR POSTER

Colours We used a neutral, simple colour scheme throughout our marketing advertisements. Here on the poster we used a black and white colour scheme which I think works well to create a professional looking advertising poster.

Star ImageThe main image that takes up most of the poster features an image of the main character presented in the film. The character is displaying a worrying facial expression that can be confirmed by the slight anxiety within her eyes. The background behind the character image is the location of the film. Without giving too much away on the poster we wanted to combine two images together of both the character and setting of the film. Using a blending tool we were able to blend together the trees and facial image into one main image that I think works well as a final poster image.

FontsWe used a bold simple font for the titles and taglines displayed on the poster. We agreed that this text looked most professional and could be easily seen and highlighted on the poster. The title ‘THE PROCEEDINGS’ we chose to present in a red colour font which stands out amongst the other texts and can read over the image. The red helps create our film’s own brand identity as a whole, like Paranormal we used this as inspiration for our own.

We didn’t use an definitive tagline for out marketing advertisements, however we instead used reviews that we thought would endure audiences.

HOW HAS THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT USED COLOURS, FONTS, STAR IMAGES AND TAGLINES ON THEIR POSTERSWE USED ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’ AS AN EXAMPLE OF ANOTHER MARKETING CAMPAIGN THAT WAS MADE ON A VERY LOW BUDGET.

Star ImageWhen first looking at this poster the first thing I recognised was the main, close up image of the girl that takes up the majority of the poster. Positioned slightly to the right the girl's face is the main focus of the poster. The close-up image only displays part of her face with her eyes and eyebrows raised showing anxiety and fear in her eyes.

The background image indicates the film’s setting and location. This is stereotypical of a thriller genre being set in a woodland, forest location. The use of the dark, black and white image as the background creates a fearful impression of what the film may be like.

TaglinesThe text used here gives a slight insight into the story behind the movie. Without giving too much away the last line of the text reads “A year later their footage was found”. This highlights the film type and indicates to the audience that it is documentary footage used to make the film. This may be classed as a unique selling point as the footage is more realistic than other horror/thriller films.

Colours The red symbol used here on the poster instantly connotes danger, the red colour symbolises blood and horror as well as standing out on the dark black background. The symbol itself used is made up of a cross that shares connotation of death.

FontThe title of the film ‘THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’ has been presented in bold capitals. It stands out on the page with its white font against the dark background . It is positioned in the centre slightly below the main image to form a main focal point of the poster.

The billing block at the bottom of the poster is presented in white to stand out. Above this is the caption; ‘Everything you’ve head is true’ , this creates tension for the audience and illustrates the real truth behind the film.

The website is highlighted in red to stand out on the poster, this is also a good way to promote the film and is a simple advertising technique used that is highly beneficial to many film distribution companies.

HOW WERE COLOURS, FONTS, STAR IMAGES AND TAGLINES USED IN OUR MAGAZINE COVER?

ColoursLike our other marketing advertisements we kept to plain, simple colour scheme for our magazine cover.For our poster we used a black and white colour scheme, however for our magazine cover we didn’t think this would work as well because a magazine cover is rarely seen in black and white. Also the black and white would have meant the text would become difficult to read. We kept the background as the woodland image and placed the text over the background using a visible font.

Star ImageThe magazine image we have used is an image taken from our filming day. The image displays one the main characters in the film. We thought that this would be appropriate to use on the cover as other similar movies we research have also used characters as a cover image. This creates a clear brand identity for our film.FontWe used a variety of bold fonts for our magazine cover, the ones we had been looking at previously did not only contain one font. They used a mix of fonts but none were too dissimilar to each other. We created the title using a different programme to the one we design the magazine using. The title is the main focal point of the cover which draws attention from the audience. We wanted this to contribute to our brand identity in producing a well-designed horror/ thriller style title.

Brand IdentityWe used the existing magazine ‘Paranormal’ as a magazine to promote our film. We thought this magazine was best suited to our horror genre as they specialise in a similar genre of films.

HOW WERE COLOURS, FONTS, STAR IMAGES AND TAGLINES USED IN OUR TEASER TRAILER?

Colours- We stuck to a black and white/ sepia editing effect for our teaser. Looking at other existing trailers, for example ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘The Blair Witch Project’ we found that they relatively used a dark colour effect throughout their trailers.

We thought the black and white worked best and created a spooky sense that was desired for our trailer.

We used a similar font to other documentary style trailers, we placed titles in the corner of the screen to display the shots as the centre focal point for the audience.

HOW THESE ELEMENTS APPEAL TO OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Through the research we conducted we found that the most common audience for thriller/horror films were teenagers. Generally aged between 13-18 these were ages most interest in this genre of film. Surprising there was a higher percentage of girls who watched horror movies in comparison to boys. Focusing on a teenage target audience we chose characters of a similar age to feature in our trailer. I think this works as audiences then feel they can relate themselves to the film rather than different ages for instance children or older adults. For our advertising campaigns we used current, modern style designs to help target teenage audiences and promote the upcoming film.

The marketing campaign we created was on a low budget. We used social media and social networking sites to help promote and market our film. We decided this was the most effective and current form of communicating to a teenage audience and could be done on a very low budget. Teenagers are able to communicate to one another throughout the day by simply the touch of a button. The development in technology in recent years has meant they can communicate to others worldwide by using social media.